Hello and welcome to The Week Ahead!
Interest rates: We just had a very busy week for central bank activity: meetings and announcements from the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the ECB.
Among them, the only major development was Jerome Powell’s indication that he will be staying on the Board of Governors of the Fed even after Kevin Wash takes over as Chair. He has every right to do this - but it’s unusual, and it stymies President Trump’s ability to reshape the Fed more to his liking. There is no love lost between these two men.
The rest was all talk: the ECB and the Bank of England left rates unchanged, but both institutions debated what to do about the oil price shock. Rate hikes are now probably on the menu for the rest of the year: the ECB is expected to hike soon, in June, while two hikes are priced in for the Bank of England in 2026.
Looking ahead, we have a short week coming up for the May bank holiday.
In macro news, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed which is the main issue facing the global economy and particularly the oil market. As I type this, Brent crude is changing hands at $108 a barrel.
When it comes to conventional economic releases, we will get US Non Farm Payrolls for April on Friday at 13:30 UK time.
The March release beat expectations by a long way: 178,000 jobs added versus expectations for only 60,000.
The April report is expected to show 73,000 new jobs.
In company news, we’ll have a wide range of AGMs - it’s most definitely AGM season in the UK, with 56 AGMs pencilled into the table below (and probably more that have escaped my attention). There will also be Q1 results from big-caps HSBC and Shell.
I’ll be taking a vacation mid-week, so I wish my co-writers the very best covering all of these updates. Keep an eye out and you may spot one or two of our new writers here!
Economic Calendar
| Date | Country | Event |
|---|---|---|
Monday 4th May | ||
UK Bank Holiday | No major events scheduled. | |
Tuesday 5th May | ||
15:00 | US | JOLTs Job Openings |
15:00 | US | ISM Services PMI |
Wednesday 6th May | ||
12:00 | US | MBA 30-Year Mortgage Rate |
Thursday 7th… |
